


Pass Me the Brazier, My Feet Are like Icebergs

by huxualorentation



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, The National (band) RPF
Genre: Gen, Pieter Paul Rubens, Songfic, Star Wars - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-04
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:47:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28432656
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/huxualorentation/pseuds/huxualorentation
Summary: While temping as a roadie to his brother's band during the High Violet Tour, Tom Berninger feels his heart aching whenever he witnesses brotherly affections between the Dessners and between the Devendorfs. And it aches all the more, when the witnessed affections are between Matt and those men who aren't Tom.





	Pass Me the Brazier, My Feet Are like Icebergs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kitseybarbours](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kitseybarbours/gifts).



> Title is a quote from Jessie Burton's stunning novel "The Miniaturist". It's an electric warmer that is asked for in this 2010-set fic, but braziers have a role...
> 
> My giftee, kitseybarbours, a The National fan like me, has written fics for the Kylux fandom that are something else: check them out, my friends!  
> This is a thank you, Kits. I may write a couple things off The Goldfinch in the future, and I'll totally gift that to you as well.  
> Also, you're part Italian, so the second paragraph of the End Notes may be of your interest!

_This is_ _my winter song_  
_December never felt so wrong_  
_'Cause you're not where you belong_  
_Inside my arms_

These lines got stuck in my mind. This one is called _Winter_ _Song_ , I think. Tom has been listening to Rob Halford's Christmas songs quite a lot as of late. Figures. He likes metal, he's not into The National's kind of music, he's currently touring with The National, what better way to rub his dislike of our music in my face than this? I'm not fair, I know. It's not like that. He's just listening to what he likes. But I'm in a sour mood, which the sight of Bryce blissfully napping on Aaron's chest throughout the bus ride has surely done nothing to soothe. Don't think about it now, about how desperately you wish you could hold Tom like that. Time to focus. We're at the venue, we are rehearsing. Funny that we are rehearsing _Apartment Story_ of all songs, a song that mentions winter, just like that Halford stuff.

_Tired and wired, we ruin too easy_  
_Sleep in our clothes and wait for winter to leave_

And so we rehearse and rehearse and we have covered more than half of the setlist when we take a break, and that's when I notice it.

The sadness with which Tom, while busy with something, looks at Scott's hand rubbing Bryan's back as Scott enquires about some drumming-related aches Bryan has been struggling with and Bryan reassures him that he's okay. 

It's almost as sad an expression, I realise now, as the one that I've seen him sporting yesterday, or the day before, or was it two bloody weeks ago, when I affectionately touched—whom? When—who? affectionately touched me. I have not paid attention to that, to him. I was too caught in brooding over me and my little brother having grown apart to realise how he longed for bridging the gap.

_'Cause you're not where you belong  
Inside my arms_

Oh, Tom. This is what you have been silently telling me, as you searched for comfort in the music you love. But in my music, the music you're not into, there's an answering line.

_Wait for winter to leave_

We'll chase this winter off, Tom. We'll melt this ice.

"Pass me that electric warmer, would you. My feet are like icebergs," Bryce complains from where he's curled up on one of the little sofas in the resting room, and Aaron obliges him before he snuggles up with him, pulling a blanket over them both. And I don't need to check on Tom's expression. I go retrieving my laptop instead. 

I was Creative Director at an advertising firm.

I know plenty about art.

"Hey, Tom, come over," I casually call out. He does. 

"It's bloody cold, isn't it? Here, there's a detail in this painting that has one feeling warm from just looking at it. The brazier, here. Isn't it wonderful." I am angling my laptop towards him, Rubens's _Samson and Delilah_ in full screen.

"Why, yes!" he exclaims with a genuine smile. He has a degree in filmmaking; he loves visual arts as much as I do. "Wait... now that's beautiful, the man cutting Samson's hair is sort of his double? And the old woman behind Delilah, too, she's basically an older her."

"Yeah. It's a Star Wars-flavoured thing, isn't it? The Dark Side. Inside of everyone of us."

"Totally!"

"And it's all the more interesting," I go on, "in the light of what an Italian scholar said of Rubens. He said that Rubens's powerful bodies, the sense of power his works give off, makes him think of the phrase _May the Force be with you_. He's an amazing fellow. That art scholar, I mean. Well, Rubens, too." I look Tom in the eye, pleased to see him smile and nod. "I'm showing you this painting, telling you this, 'cause I know you love Star Wars... I thought… you might be interested?"

"You bet! Thanks, Matt." He touches my arm and that's when I clutch his, my other hand cupping his neck, as I let the words out of my mouth before I get, and the saying sounds quite funny in this weather, cold feet.

"It's not that I love them more than I love you, Tom. I love them in a different way. But more... no. Never." I swallow.

Tom holds his breath for a second, his eyes going wide, and then he lets it out as he mimics my posture, clutching my arm, cupping my neck with his free hand. My double, as if in a brazier-lit tableau.

"Brother," he whispers.

Our foreheads touch. I hide my face in the crook of his neck and I inhale. After the bus ride, he has the smell I have come to associate with my bandmates, the masculine scent of men who have been on the road but keep themselves clean so that it's not the stink of stale sweat, it's a nice smell, a perfume of sorts.

_So worry not_  
_All things are well_  
_We'll be all right_  
_We have our looks and perfume on_

And I think I quite like _Apartment Story_.

**Author's Note:**

> Tom Berninger made an incredibly beautiful rockumentary (and brocumentary) out of his experience as a roadie: "Mistaken for Strangers" (2013), that I can't recommend enough.
> 
> Italian speakers, anyone? The talk where Rubens's Star Wars vibes are mentioned is here: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=QLHngLeuH70  
> This gentleman is one of the greatest art scholars to ever grace our country. He talks about art with such simplicity and passion that he reaches anyone's soul.


End file.
